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I'm interested in getting a Disklavier, but have been put off by the high price of the Mark IV. I'm reluctant to get earlier Marks due to concerns that they are not as accurate or as robust as the IV.

So I was excited when I first read about the E3 on this forum, which is touted as a slimmed down, more affordable Mark IV. But then I got a list of retail prices for the E3's (see below) - and they don't seem that affordable.

My question is how much can I expect the Yamaha dealer to knock off of these prices? 10 percent? 20 percent? More? If anyone owns an E3, I'm interested in your evaluation of it.

I would suggest that before you decide on the Disklavier E3 or the M4 for that matter, you determine what you want the system to do and at what level of quality. There are several systems out there with different functions and levels of quality that you can put on any piano – you do not have to purchase a Yamaha. However, the Disklavier is the only system that I know of that comes built in from the factory.

The bad news is that, at this time, the Disklaviers are not upgradeable - you need to purchase a new piano to upgrade the Disklavier to a new version. The M4 being PC based has been upgraded several times at the software level but still has the same issues if there is a major hardware upgrade to a future M5.

From what I have seen the E3 is more of an upgrade to the MIII than a cut down version of the M4 (PC based system). So the high prices surprise me.

The new E3 system has marked advantages over the previous Mark III. It is new and just arriving in the showrooms. As a result they are all at the new costing profiles post April 09. Discounting will not be as heavy as aged dated stock on hand.

The question of upgradability is the same with all systems except the PC based Mark IV. There is no other upgradable alternative. Yamaha does support their products with occasional firmware upgrades; I just did a Mark III this week.

The Mark IV system has gone through several meaningful upgrades that added new features and capabilities since its introduction. All free to owners.

DRJ,Go into your Yamaha dealer. Tell him which model you want. Get the demo. Sit down and hammer out a deal that is good for both of you.

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Co-Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Buying A Piano. A "must read" before you shop. Work for west coast dealer for Yamaha, Schimmel, Bosendorfer, Wm. Knabe.

The question of upgradability is the same with all systems except the PC based Mark IV. There is no other upgradable alternative. Yamaha does support their products with occasional firmware upgrades; I just did a Mark III this week.

The E3 runs LINUX, just like the Mark IV, so I wouldn't rule out possible feature updates completely (subject to being controllable by the simplified interface and sufficient free space in the flash memory)